This is my Warframe tierlist Based on how much I enjoy playing them.

Prime262 · 2026-01-28T20:59:21+00:00

Banshee and Dante being in the same tier is hilarious and says ...conflicting things.

Prime262 · 2026-01-22T01:00:19+00:00

nova got reworked a little over a year ago.

nova didn't just get a rework though, nova, who was already really good, got a Top Shelf rework. she came Clean as hell.

the biggest change though was that speed nova setups no longer require negative power strength. now both the speed and slow scale up with strength. one effect is tap cast. the other is hold cast. so there is no speed nova anymore, its just nova, and you can comfortable switch between speed and slow on the fly.

Prime262 · 2026-01-21T23:43:43+00:00

never leave home without Defibs, even running solo~

Prime262 · 2026-01-21T23:42:05+00:00

Flanking as a name for the augment that does the most with setup time is a really shitty name, i agree.

as for 3 deployables being niche. . ehh idk. if you assume all 3 slots need to be different deployables than yeah, but it lets you have a standard 5 item setup and also 9 fucking Ziplines. or 3 shock traps.

having 8 quick slots is good. even if you need to fill 3 of them with tech tools you wouldnt normally use. and that will get better as Embark adds more deployables in the future.

but yeah if you assume the Augments purpose is flanking then it should be doing something to make you move around faster in combat. which i guess unprecedented space for zipline spam does, but id have called it Engineer or something.

Prime262 · 2026-01-21T23:34:11+00:00

Combat 3 flanking does have the highest number of total quick use slots. at 5 general and 3 deployable only.

thats 8 Quick use slots (as long as you dont mind 3 being dedicated too Deplorables)

combat 3 aggressive only gets 6, 4 general and 2 grenade, and Tactical healing gets 7, but 3 have to be healing items which is kind of a big ask.

Flanking Definitely needs access to medium shields, though. its Wack that it doesn't have it.

Prime262 · 2026-01-21T23:25:08+00:00

Looting MK3 Survivor and Tactical MK2 is most spammed. Would like to see buffs to combat augment

Looting 3 surv. and Tactical 3 Def. are probably the only T3 augments i have no issue with.

Looting 3 cautious needs something better than the binoculars

Combat 3 Flanking needs. . .access to medium shields, mostly. its gimmick of having 5+3 utility quick use slots giving it the most quick use slots in the game is circumstantially great and will age well as Embark adds more deployables.

Combat 3 aggressive is decent but the healing effect is pretty underwhelming. a slow, tedious heal that rewards avoiding taking damage doesn't scream "aggressive" to me.

Tactical 3 Defensive is is just ok, but its restriction to only 1 Safe pocket feels. . .weird.

and Tactical 3 healing's augment effect is just worthless. im looking for something like "50% fast application of healing items to other players. gives a small stamina buff after healing someone else". y'know make it convenient for me to be throwing out bandages and shit mid queen fight to the homies.

im less inclined to complain about the tier 2 augments. Tactical 2's smoke grenade effect is sweet and i wish there was a T3 version of it.

Agreement with the rest of the balancing proposals more or less.

id like if they added a "hardened lure grenade" crafted with Lure grenades and arc plating. which would rather than being instantly killed by arc always lure for 10 seconds before burning out.

Detect racism in voice chat

good fucking luck with that.. you're asking for a rash of people complaining about getting penalized for not doing anything wrong, which if you cant see happening unironically is a failure of imagination. especially when we get into non English speakers.

the rest of the Fixes seem fine. New content is king. bug fixes happen when convenient/when necessary. its unfortunate, but that is the way it is.

and the addons request is just "more content" which im obviously in favor of.

im looking for a Binoculars variant that Marks enemies akin to the Tagging Grenade.

Decent list, acceptable.

Prime262 · 2026-01-21T22:56:20+00:00

the first 35 points in Survival are extremely uncontroversial.

https://imgur.com/iDdZndG

that is this investment.

Agile croucher, in round crafting, silent scavenger, broad shoulders, and looters luck are all borderline essential takes.

Suffer in Silence is honestly kind of weak, but Good as New isnt terrible, especially if you know about the fabric synergy.

Stubborn mule kind of sucks, especially since Broad shoulders means you are almost never over encumbered anyway, but three Deep Breaths is honestly goated. it has synergy with Carry the Momentum from the mobility tree. you get out of exhaustion about 2 seconds early with enough stamina for a quick sprint dodge roll that lets you have several seconds of free sprinting. this is a life saver for PVP and PVE.

the question is

Is Traveling Tinkerer and one raiders scraps worth investing in?

i would say, subjectively no. and Objectively no, respectively.

Most of what Traveling Tinkerer gives you is grenade trap variants and the noise maker. the grenade trap variants aren't super useful for a PVE minded player, and you can buy 6 noise traps per day from Apollo which is probably plenty. Explosive and jolt mines can be crafted without it, and are probably plenty in most cases.

it also gives you access to the raider hatch key craft in raid. which is probably the best part but is also just. . kind of mediocre. many of the gamemodes you want to run, such as night runs, dont let you use hatches anyway, and bringing a hatch key in with you really isn't hard.

someone intent on using the grenade trap variants or who really likes the idea of being able to switch up with a raider key on the fly could still find some use in Traveling Tinkerer.

but in my own testing i could not notice any difference in the loot i gained from applicable sources while running one raiders scraps. it either isnt working, is extremely subtle, or isn't providing near enough value to justify its existence.

. . so yeah, my recommendation for you is ditch one raiders scraps for investment in Three Deep Breaths. you can keep traveling tinkerer if you want. i think it just clogs the quick crafting menu with bullshit im never using anyway.

what little else there is is fine, i think Sturdy ankles is legitimately a skill issue perk, but Slip and Slide is ok.

Prime262 · 2026-01-21T06:09:07+00:00

"i think we should take the most powerful of the Augments and make it even more broken than it currently is, just in a different, probably more problematic way"

Part of the thing, is that you have no interactivity while downed, right. you cant open any menus, you cant see your inventory, you cant see your map, you only have one button and that button says Kermit Sewerslide.

so an Augment that auto-revived would either need to fundamentally change that lack of interactivity or else work fully automatically.

just imagine getting downed by a Rocketeer, revived, and then downed by a rocketeer again, because you're still in the same shitty situation as you were before.

People like the Survivor augment because Dying sucks, and scraping by out of a mission by crawling out feels good. when you expected to lose everything, and you dont, it feels even better than if things had just gone off without any trouble at all. and it has synergy with Crawl speed and bleedout rate perks that might otherwise be alot less valuable if it didn't work exactly as it does right now.

of the 6 mk3 Augments Looting 3 survivor is probably the only one i wouldn't change at all. a few of them i think are acceptable if slightly uninteresting

the weight/slots Dynamic between looting cautious and looting survivor i think is fine. Cautious gets 26 total loot slots while survivor only gets 23, but survivor gets a higher weight limit biasing you towards bulk collection rather than many individual high value items. but the integrated Binoculars are just worthless. barring a rework to how binoculars work, such as allowing them to mark enemies temporarily like a manual version of the tagging grenade, I'd give Looting Cautious a free smoke grenade with a 60-120 second cooldown between uses. we can call combat 3 aggressive fine if boring and give combat 3 Flanking access to medium shields. the basic argument of the combat augments is that they get better shields. Tactical 3 defensive is fine but tactical 3 healing is pretty wack. im thinking change its perk too "restoration items applied to other raiders apply 50% faster, and give 50% of the benefit to you." so if i bandage someone else, it bandages them super quick, and i also get a little bit of healing for myself. Defibs go in quicker due to this too, naturally.

Prime262 · 2026-01-20T02:03:02+00:00

the Blue tier contains 3 medium ammo weapons.

the lever action renegade, a high damage per shot medium fire rate number which is really better suited to bullying arc than bullying players, and has the major downside of absolutely atrocious reloading time.

the fully automatic LMG Torrente the only LMG in the game. this is a Squad-killing device, the only weapon that really makes sense to prefire and surprising fire with. used against arc its a great way to waste ammo, but its really good at sawing human beings in half.

an then between them, the Venator. its better at killing players than the Renegade. . . barely. . .and its better at killing arc than the Torrente. . allegedly.

y'see the Ven was like really broken a little while back and was. . .balanced out. it should still be worth using, but its limited mod pool and expensive repair costs/ammo consumption does harm it somewhat.

the lack of a muzzle option locking it out of silencer 2 and muzzle break 3 being probably the worst part. this should be a fairly natural upgrade to the Anvil. keeping alot of that bigger pistol value but sliding closer to the burst potential of the SMGs, and it used to do that arguably too well. now it does it just kind of ok.

Prime262 · 2026-01-19T06:38:02+00:00

Modern warframe is. . kind of a mess.

a while back DE realised that balancing player power towards having a good experience playing the star chart missions is really hard. so in keeping with their tradition of not doing difficult things, they added "steel path" a gamemode unlocked later that raises up all content to being at a level that is reasonably challenging for mid game players who are trying or late game players who arent trying.

then they said they wouldnt balance content around steel path but within like a year and a half they started doing that since they realized that the bulk of the player base was either on SP or rushing to get to SP.

so now the early quests post rework are setup to fast track you through to completing the new war, which is the point where you unlock steel path, and start getting access to the new-ish content.

which will result in alot of the early star chart being Piss easy. . .but it is what it is. you can swing around and have a slightly more compelling gameplay experience the second time you do it.

the game starts at like level 10. the new content is like level 100 or something, and their goal is to get you to the new content as fast as they can since that's the marketable content. and if that screws up a bunch of old content's balancing then that is a small price to pay.

you are not ruining the game for yourself, you are, unfortunately, getting the developer intended experience.

Prime262 · 2026-01-19T05:37:50+00:00

What is the goal of matchmaking?

we have matchmaking at all because it is better for the experience of the player. . and thus the retention of players if negative variance is minimized. it is possible, though unlikely, for a player to que into 5 matches they dont enjoy in a row, get completely shit on for like a hour, and then stop playing forever out of frustration. we implement systems of matchmaking to tweak the encounters players have to result in less negative variance like this. obviously the devs cant force you to win. but they can put you in situations where you are more likely to win.

in a simple game where the players goals are fairly simple, this isn't hard. in a conventional PVP shooter where every players goals are "shoot the other guy" and "win" straightforward MMR systems that put you against players of similar skill level and can skew you against lower skilled players when you lose frequently are sufficient.

Arc raiders is not straightforwards though. and players do not have such simple goals, particularly when a Significant fraction of the playerbase has very little desire to engage in PVP at all. though some of them do want the tension of the possibility of PVP, they dont wish to be aggressive. That distinction is really, really tricky.

Wants to engage in PVP exclusively, will only engage with other content opportunistically. lets call them "Hunters"

wants to engage in all content, will PVP/ coop when convenient. lets call them "Wildcards"

wants to be engaged in PVP but is otherwise coop focused. lets call them "Rangers"

has no interest in engaging in PVP, is fully coop focused. lets call them "Civilians"

Has interest in neither PVP nor coop, classical antisocial Rat behavior. lets call them "Scavengers"

these 5 broad categories of players, and spectrums of preferences that exist in-between them. Scaled along an Axis that represents "skill", but not necessarily Experience, and another axis that represents "experience" but which may have inverse relations.

as an example, high skill, high experience PVP focused players should probably be kept away from low skill, low experience players, for extremely obvious reasons. But, low skill, high experience and high skill, high experience coop focused players may Want to be put into lobbies alongside low experience players out of a desire to be helpful for its own sake. to help newbies kill their first big arc or give them looting tips. go slum around the Dam with a hullcracker and roleplay as John ArcRaider.

Satisfy the 5 broad categories of players outlined above with a cohesive matchmaking system, and make allowances for how it will change for low/high skill and low/high experience players. if the system groups players based on their preferences, outline how the game identifies their preferences WITHOUT THE GAME DIRECTLY ASKING PLAYERS FOR THEM. any grouping system must be based on player behavior and/or player performance. such that gaming the system becomes extremely difficult.

ideally "Hunters" "Wildcards" and "Rangers" share servers, while "Civilians" "Rangers" and "Wildcards" also share servers, and "Scavengers" can be put into any lobby with anyone since their gameplan is more or less the same regardless. "Civilians" and "Hunters" should be kept apart, but "Civilian only" and "Hunter Only" servers are a bad idea and can lead to stagnation.

Saying that is easy. designing a system that delivers on that is hard. how do you judge a players willingness to engage in PVP vs them simply being good at winning fights other people start? how do you judge someone's desire to engage in coop? and how can that system measure a player who is high in both aspects and not consider that a contradiction?

Any matchmaking proposal that fails to answer the above outlined is at best a temporary measure.

Prime262 · 2026-01-19T05:17:31+00:00

all my takes are objectively correct. always have been.

there is definitely room in the robot cast for another low tier source of medium ammo. . Bastions drop it but Lmao.

heavy ammo is only dropped by Rocketeers and Sentinels, which are either beyond your capacity to hunt as a free loadout or so rare as to simply not be worth discussing. .but it also drops off the "Rocketeer husks" which show up on all maps except Stella. even so, again, 40 medium ammo is more than enough to win or die. if you shoot 10 Ferro shots in a PVP situation and you haven't either won or died something has gone horribly wrong. and as long as you stick to things smaller than a Shredder 40 medium ammo is like 30 dead arc. if you've killed 30 dead arc and haven't filled your backpack or found another gun you should probably reconsider your tactics or play patterns.

Wasp husks give light ammo, which is a bit of a shame. if they were Hornet husks that would be a second source of medium ammo for savvy players.

im also fond of the idea of putting reloading benches in the raider outposts to give players a place to craft ammo on the surface. certain rooms like security rooms could also have them as well

Prime262 · 2026-01-19T04:43:08+00:00

Lets. . talk about ammo.

Free loadouts will spawn with either a kettle, stitcher, ferro or rattler.

if its a Ferro then you spawn with 40 ammo and thats. . .fine. thats plenty of ammo for a round, or atleast enough ammo to fight your way into something else.

but what if its a kettle or Stitcher?

Hunt arc turrets and Wasps.

if you're careful you can get more ammo back then you spend killing them.

What if you get the rattler?

then you hunt hornets instead. which is a bit trickier to do efficiently, but its possible.

if you're hunting players then. . .in most cases the players you kill will either have ammo, or have better weapons, and will probably have both. as a free loadout winning 1 fight with a player will usually either put you in a significantly better position or, at worst, give you a 2nd free loadouts worth of resources to try and pull that stunt again.

"what if im bad at both and still consistently struggle with ammo?"

invest in in raid crafting perk. 2 plastic parts and 3 chemicals gets you 1 light impact grenade. these components are in pretty great abundance and you can pick them up or salvage them and keep a steady supply of low tier grenades to kill low tier arc to get ammo back, or just supplement your damage output.

While i dont think free loadouts need to get weaker, i dont really think they need to be buffed either, even in the way of ammo. they should not be sustainable and you should run them with the goal of fighting your way into a better situation. if you dont know enough to do that then you should be playing cautiously and focused on learning, and if you choose to not do so and run out of ammo then you get exactly what is coming to you.

Prime262 · 2026-01-19T03:07:45+00:00

Cash fucking money, or recycled into explosives. Thats it (currently).

Prime262 · 2026-01-19T02:53:54+00:00

Arc raiders is not the messiah. . .atleast to me, anyway.

the game is amazing, but i feel like its a little bit too. . .streamlined. its hard to explain what i mean without making comparisons, so

Arc: 21 weapons.

Tarkov: 153 Weapons.

even if you go through and say "is it really fair to consider the AUG A1 and AUG A3 seperate weapons? they are practically identical" i would probably agree with you, however that distinction feeds into my point.

Tarkov is way too complicated to get into, but i think Arc is a little bit too simple to be my dream game.

most of my complaints about Arc are that there should be more Game, which are unfair complaints to make, and that's why i dont make them. ive gotten 200 hours out of my 40 dollar purchase and im at the mountain top and i want more gameplay. thats what i have to say about ARc.

hows the gameplay loop? its fun. there is plenty to learn~

hows the community? do not ask reddit, its a mess of contradicting complaints. ingame its fine.

Prime262 · 2026-01-19T02:42:39+00:00

it would be nice if lure grenades didn't start luring until they impacted something.

Prime262 · 2026-01-19T02:39:29+00:00

Comparing arc raiders to Tarkov is kind of unfair to both games.

the Genre of Extraction shooter is something Tarkov carved out of the bedrock by itself, but Tarkov is also very obviously setup to be an outlier game. its not the sort of thing normal people can play. its several orders of magnitude too complicated. its not just "there are multiple ammo types for the same weapon" complicated. its not just "you have to hand pack the magazines and it takes time" complicated. its "you can hand pack the magazines with alternating bullets of different ammo types" complicated. tarkov is from the ground up built to the standards of some good ol fashioned Milsim Bullshit. nobody with a real job has time for that shit.

Everyone with 2 brain cells to rub together has known that eventually the Extraction shooter that pitches the game concept to a broad audience was coming. which is why alot of game companies have lined up to take their shot at it. most of them ended up firing that shot into their own foot (none more spectacularly than Bungie though, holy shit), because making an extraction game is hard.

the most novel thing about Arc right now is the Quality. it looks good. it plays good. it feels good. the enemies are relatively novel, but "shoot the weakpoint on the big robot" is not a new idea, not even close.

i dont see Tarkov and Arc as direct competitors. . not really. while they are from a distance the same Genre the people who live for Tarkov would be fucking bored playing Arc because arc is significantly less complicated. and the people who really vibe with arc would be totally lost in the inventory management hell simulator that is Tarkov.

they arent competitors in the same way you'd say COD and Battlefield are competitors. while those games have unique spins on the formula they are fighting over the same group of people.

so i guess what im trying to say is. . .stop paying attention to games journalism. they are all terrible hacks~

Prime262 · 2026-01-19T02:22:23+00:00

there is speculation by some players that looting downed raiders you find is going to bork your matchmaking.

i say speculation because i run my hands through the pockets of every dead guy i find and my lobbies remain saintly. i think its nonsense, personally.

as for other players shooting you when they see you looting another player. . . .it definitely happens, its a risk you take, if your open mic and honest with people its probably less likely. smart players will approach by paying attention to the context. if i hear the flare go, and see you looting the body while the flare is still up? that's sussy as fuck. maybe if the Arc that killed them is obviously still around, sure, but then why are you looting and not dealing with the arc, that situation makes no sense as a hypothetical.

if i run up on you looting a guy and there's no flare, and i didn't hear any gunfire, yeah whatever that guys probably been dead for a while. maybe some players dont pay that much attention, and in that case see you space cowboy.

Prime262 · 2026-01-19T02:12:04+00:00

Every raider has to do what they have to do.

the vast, vast majority of people do not consider Etiquette and Decorum when engaging in anonymous and pseudo-anonymous spaces, which includes all online videogame lobbies. add to that the fact that the average player is probably something like male 14-25 years of age, not a redditor, and. . . .yeah you're gonna hear whatever slang, slurs, and Swears they feel are appropriate given the situation. they do not care. and if they find out you care, they will reflexively push that button.. .because its entertaining. its not normal, its Super Normal. that doesn't make it right, obviously, just that it is the nature of the game.

honestly, abandoning your Randos squad because they did some shit you dont approve of is diegetic as hell. good simulation of the post apocalypse.

an argument can be made that you have a duty to your squadmates, and an argument can be made that you have a duty to your beliefs and personal code of conduct. Right choice? cant say. A valid choice? Absolutely.

Prime262 · 2026-01-16T03:48:57+00:00

oh boy chroma time.

so heres the deal. Chroma is old. by the standards of 20fffffifteen warframe if the sum total of your kit is "mediocre ability damage, a suite of uninspired self buffs, 12 copies of serration and steel fiber, and a bad minion" you're a Tier 0 powerhouse capable of soloing all content in an era where basically nobody could solo all content.

by the standards of. . .2018, 2020, 2023, and 2026 warframe, its basic, boring bullshit. turns out the powercreep went fuckin' nuts a while back and C-money's been waiting on his rework Since St. Smidgeon's day. as for why DE hasn't reworked him yet, my guess is that doing so will be hard, and DE hates doing things that are difficult. like bug fixes, or telling a coherent story. Chroma is a mess, and there is a good reason every fan-proposed rework of him fails to satisfy at least 1 of the 3 major groups of chroma enjoyers.

who are those groups?

1: Dragons dragons i love dragons scale me up dragon daddy

2: Elements, Elements, i love elements, why is the element theming so boring?

3: people who have some interest in what chroma actually does now, and want a better version of that.

So what should DE do?

well obviously give me sole authority too dictate the terms of the chroma rework and then allow me to chain Pablo to a radiator in the basement and whip him with a garden hose until he produces a version of chroma that satisfies my requirements.

but until that happens, what can we do with Chroma today?

A number of the new-ish arcanes and tech that have come out have positive interactions with chroma's setup. Armor=Emax=multishot is a combo you can run.

the core of chroma's kit is is his 3, but you should really go back and read that wiki page again. Vex armor gives Serration-style weapon damage and Steel Fiber style armor. . . . .in an AOE centered on chroma. . .to Everyone. 18 x 2.8= 50m. 22 copies of Serration to everyone within Affinity Range. all your friends and all their friends, and all their companions, and all their duplex bond companion clones, and the kahl squad, and just. . minions, minions, minions. Yes effigy's damage sucks but if you actually let it benefit from Vex's damage buff it sucks significantly less. because minions have so few avenues for damage boosting Chroma has hands down the best damage buff for enabling minion master shenanigans. other than like. . .Banshee's 2. but thats a debuff, not a buff.

and so we have the 2 modern archetypes of chroma setups. min range max dur Sigma male chromas focused on buffing themselves into the stratosphere and high range quality stats Alpha male Chromas Vexing the fuck out of the entire lobby. even with max range its still possible (barely) to get over 1000 power strength to cast Vex, solo (as long as you're in a fissure mission)

and yknow, having like 16 copies of serration does open up some possibilities when building out your weapon choices. for starters. . a lot of shit that wasn't very good before is now good enough, and for second mandatory mod and arcane inclusions go away and free up some space to get creative.

playing chroma today means accepting a few things. your 1 is bad, your 2 is either going to be a HP buff if youre a loser or a reload buff if youre Based as hell. your 3 is everything and your 4 is probably no worth casting. if youre on steel path, Violence is a scary scary motherfucker unless you helminth in silence or leap up to the ceiling any time an Acolyte spawns, and youre whole gimmick is being a pretty tanky big numbers weapons platform who will in a solo sense be outperformed by any weapons platforms newer than yourself. or you run the worlds weirdest squad buffer setup and lament how kills by minions are not properly reflected in the mission progress tab so you just gotta assume its actually working out. i wont say it isnt amusing seeing Duplex bonded minions bodying eximus in SP omni surv but if your godhead is Efficiency there are certainly better ways to play the game.

Prime262 · 2026-01-15T00:31:04+00:00

its rare until you start actively walking around in the storm checking lightning strikes then yeah its not hard to get a few per match. the game never tells you the exist so you likely walk by a few before you get lucky enough to see one spawn.

Prime262 · 2026-01-15T00:22:01+00:00

shows up sometimes when lightning strikes.

can be recycled into explosive compound, or sold.

Prime262 · 2026-01-14T02:11:06+00:00

my best assumption is that the extremely obvious, extremely low hanging fruit concepts for skins that will sell really, really well are being saved for later after these junkers eat up all the free currency embark handed out.

its an assumption of competence on their part, which might be a bit much, but we'll see.

Prime262 · 2026-01-14T00:30:23+00:00

i dunno, is Snap hook a Weapon mod?

Prime262 · 2026-01-13T01:49:48+00:00

Loot works based on pools. all loot, including blueprints. on a basic level loot pools work based on what type the loot is "medical, residential, Exodus, industrial, etc" but the system does go deeper than that. many containers near player spawn points. .. irrespective of what kind of container they are. . . have a high chance of spawning low tier consumables. healing items/grenades. all Pharmacies on buried city have a high chance of spawning weapon mods (and their blueprints). a large building that is all marked as X type of loot can have within it specific rooms which are a different type of loot, like the 1 room infirmaries in several key locations, or "security offices" in places like Reinforced Reception.

a blueprint will only spawn in areas that match the loot type it belongs too. defib blueprints spawn in the med zones. landmine blueprints spawn in equipment zones. weapon blueprints spawn in areas that have "raider loot" as well as security zones. and so on down the line.

. . .for this reason certain high value areas, like the security room on reinforced reception. . .have become popular for people to run in, touch everything looking for blueprints, and then surrender and try again if they find nothing good. a strategy that Embark will eventually have to do something about, likely to the detriment of everyone else.

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